Oprichnina is a territory separated from the state. The police in medieval Rus' - the oprichnina of Ivan the Terrible: briefly about the oprichnina and the goals of their action
Oprichnina of Ivan the Terrible
Oprichnina is a state policy of terror that reigned in Rus' at the end of the 16th century under the reign of Ivan 4.
The essence of the oprichnina was the seizure of property from citizens in favor of the state. By order of the sovereign, special lands were allocated, which were used exclusively for the royal needs and the needs of the royal court. These territories had their own government and were closed to ordinary citizens. All territories were taken from the landowners with the help of threats and force.
The word "oprichnina" comes from the Old Russian word "oprich", which means "special". Also called oprichnina was that part of the state that had already been transferred to the sole use of the tsar and his subjects, as well as oprichniki (members of the sovereign's secret police).
The number of oprichnina (royal retinue) was about a thousand people.
Reasons for introducing the oprichnina
Tsar Ivan the Terrible was famous for his stern disposition and military campaigns. The emergence of the oprichnina is largely connected with the Livonian War.
In 1558, he started the Livonian War for the right to seize the Baltic coast, but the course of the war did not go as the sovereign would have liked. Ivan repeatedly reproached his commanders for not acting decisively enough, and the boyars did not at all respect the tsar as an authority in military matters. The situation is aggravated by the fact that in 1563 one of Ivan’s military leaders betrays him, thereby increasingly undermining the tsar’s trust in his retinue.
Ivan 4 begins to suspect the existence of a conspiracy between the governor and the boyars against his royal power. He believes that his entourage dreams of ending the war, overthrowing the sovereign and installing Prince Vladimir Staritsky in his place. All this forces Ivan to create a new environment for himself that would be able to protect him and punish everyone who goes against the king. This is how oprichniki were created - special warriors of the sovereign - and the policy of oprichnina (terror) was established.
The beginning and development of the oprichnina. Main events.
The guardsmen followed the tsar everywhere and were supposed to protect him, but it happened that these guards abused their powers and committed terror, punishing the innocent. The Tsar turned a blind eye to all this and always justified his guardsmen in any disputes. As a result of the outrages of the guardsmen, very soon they began to be hated not only by ordinary people, but also by the boyars. All the most terrible executions and acts committed during the reign of Ivan the Terrible were committed by his guardsmen.
Ivan 4 leaves for Aleksandrovskaya Sloboda, where he creates a secluded settlement together with his guardsmen. From there, the tsar regularly makes raids on Moscow in order to punish and execute those whom he considers traitors. Almost everyone who tried to stop Ivan in his lawlessness soon died.
In 1569, Ivan begins to suspect that intrigues are being woven in Novgorod and that there is a conspiracy against him. Having gathered a huge army, Ivan moves into the city and in 1570 reaches Novgorod. After the tsar finds himself in the lair of what he believes are traitors, his guardsmen begin their terror - they rob residents, kill innocent people, and burn houses. According to the data, mass beatings of people took place every day, 500-600 people.
The next stop of the cruel tsar and his guardsmen was Pskov. Despite the fact that the tsar initially planned to also carry out reprisals against the residents, in the end only some of the Pskovites were executed, and their property was confiscated.
After Pskov, Grozny again goes to Moscow to find accomplices of the Novgorod treason there and commit reprisals against them.
In 1570-1571, a huge number of people died in Moscow at the hands of the Tsar and his guardsmen. The king did not spare anyone, not even his own close associates; as a result, about 200 people were executed, including the most noble people. A large number of people survived, but suffered greatly. The Moscow executions are considered the apogee of oprichnina terror.
The end of the oprichnina
The system began to fall apart in 1571, when Rus' was attacked by the Crimean Khan Devlet-Girey. The guardsmen, accustomed to living by robbing their own citizens, turned out to be useless warriors and, according to some reports, simply did not show up on the battlefield. This is what forced the tsar to abolish the oprichnina and introduce the zemshchina, which was not much different. There is information that the tsar’s retinue continued to exist almost unchanged until his death, changing only the name from “oprichniki” to “court”.
Results of the oprichnina of Ivan the Terrible
The results of the oprichnina of 1565-1572 were disastrous. Despite the fact that the oprichnina was conceived as a means of unifying the state and the purpose of the oprichnina of Ivan the Terrible was to protect and destroy feudal fragmentation, it ultimately led only to chaos and complete anarchy.
In addition, the terror and devastation carried out by the guardsmen led to an economic crisis in the country. The feudal lords lost their lands, the peasants did not want to work, the people were left without money and did not believe in the justice of their sovereign. The country was mired in chaos, the oprichnina divided the country into several disparate parts.
The role of the oprichnina of Ivan the Terrible in the history of the Russian state
Hundreds, if not thousands of historical studies, monographs, articles, reviews have been written about such a phenomenon as the oprichnina of I. the Terrible (1565-1572), dissertations have been defended, the main causes have long been identified, the course of events has been reconstructed, and the consequences have been explained.
However, to this day, neither in domestic nor in foreign historiography there is a consensus on the importance of the oprichnina in the history of the Russian state. For centuries, historians have been debating: how should we perceive the events of 1565-1572? Was the oprichnina simply the cruel terror of a half-mad despot king against his subjects? Or was it based on a sound and necessary policy in those conditions, aimed at strengthening the foundations of statehood, increasing the authority of the central government, improving the country’s defense capability, etc.?
In general, all the diverse opinions of historians can be reduced to two mutually exclusive statements: 1) the oprichnina was determined by the personal qualities of Tsar Ivan and had no political meaning (N.I. Kostomarov, V.O. Klyuchevsky, S.B. Veselovsky, I. Y. Froyanov); 2) the oprichnina was a well-thought-out political step of Ivan the Terrible and was directed against those social forces that opposed his “autocracy.”
There is also no unanimity of opinion among supporters of the latter point of view. Some researchers believe that the purpose of the oprichnina was to crush the boyar-princely economic and political power associated with the destruction of large patrimonial land ownership (S.M. Solovyov, S.F. Platonov, R.G. Skrynnikov). Others (A.A. Zimin and V.B. Kobrin) believe that the oprichnina “aimed” exclusively at the remnants of the appanage princely aristocracy (Staritsky Prince Vladimir), and was also directed against the separatist aspirations of Novgorod and the resistance of the church as a powerful one opposing the state organizations. None of these provisions are indisputable, so the scientific discussion about the meaning of the oprichnina continues.
What is oprichnina?
Anyone who is at least somehow interested in the history of Russia knows very well that there was a time when guardsmen existed in Rus'. In the minds of most modern people, this word has become the definition of a terrorist, a criminal, a person who deliberately commits lawlessness with the connivance of the supreme power, and often with its direct support.
Meanwhile, the very word “oprich” in relation to any property or land ownership began to be used long before the reign of Ivan the Terrible. Already in the 14th century, “oprichnina” was the name given to the part of the inheritance that goes to the prince’s widow after his death (“widow’s share”). The widow had the right to receive income from a certain part of the land, but after her death the estate was returned to the eldest son, another eldest heir, or, in the absence of one, was assigned to the state treasury. Thus, oprichnina in the XIV-XVI centuries was a specially allocated inheritance for life.
Over time, the word “oprichnina” acquired a synonym that goes back to the root “oprich”, which means “except.” Hence “oprichnina” - “pitch darkness”, as it was sometimes called, and “oprichnik” - “pitch”. But this synonym was introduced into use, as some scientists believe, by the first “political emigrant” and opponent of Ivan the Terrible, Andrei Kurbsky. In his messages to the Tsar, the words “pitch people” and “utter darkness” are used for the first time in relation to the oprichnina of Ivan IV.
In addition, it should be noted that the Old Russian word “oprich” (adverb and preposition), according to Dahl’s dictionary, means: “Outside, around, outside, beyond what.” Hence “oprichnina” - “separate, allocated, special.”
Thus, it is symbolic that the name of the Soviet employee of the “special department” - “special officer” - is actually a semantic tracing of the word “oprichnik”.
In January 1558, Ivan the Terrible began the Livonian War to seize the Baltic Sea coast in order to gain access to sea communications and simplify trade with Western European countries. Soon the Grand Duchy of Moscow faces a broad coalition of enemies, which include Poland, Lithuania, and Sweden. In fact, the Crimean Khanate also participates in the anti-Moscow coalition, which ravages the southern regions of the Moscow principality with regular military campaigns. The war is becoming protracted and exhausting. Drought, famine, plague epidemics, Crimean Tatar campaigns, Polish-Lithuanian raids and a naval blockade carried out by Poland and Sweden devastate the country. The sovereign himself continually faces manifestations of boyar separatism, the reluctance of the boyar oligarchy to continue the Livonian War, which was important for the Moscow kingdom. In 1564, the commander of the Western army, Prince Kurbsky - in the past one of the tsar’s closest personal friends, a member of the “Elected Rada” - goes over to the enemy’s side, betrays Russian agents in Livonia and participates in the offensive actions of the Poles and Lithuanians.
Ivan IV's position becomes critical. It was possible to get out of it only with the help of the toughest, most decisive measures.
On December 3, 1564, Ivan the Terrible and his family suddenly left the capital on a pilgrimage. The king took with him the treasury, personal library, icons and symbols of power. Having visited the village of Kolomenskoye, he did not return to Moscow and, after wandering for several weeks, stopped in Alexandrovskaya Sloboda. On January 3, 1565, he announced his abdication of the throne, due to “anger” at the boyars, church, voivode and government officials. Two days later, a deputation headed by Archbishop Pimen arrived in Alexandrovskaya Sloboda, which persuaded the tsar to return to his kingdom. From Sloboda, Ivan IV sent two letters to Moscow: one to the boyars and clergy, and the other to the townspeople, explaining in detail why and with whom the sovereign was angry, and against whom he “bears no grudge.” Thus, he immediately divided society, sowing the seeds of mutual distrust and hatred of the boyar elite among ordinary townspeople and the minor serving nobility.
At the beginning of February 1565, Ivan the Terrible returned to Moscow. The Tsar announced that he was again taking over the reigns, but on the condition that he was free to execute traitors, put them in disgrace, deprive them of their property, etc., and that neither the boyar Duma nor the clergy would interfere in his affairs. Those. The sovereign introduced the “oprichnina” for himself.
This word was used at first in the sense of special property or possession; now it has acquired a different meaning. In the oprichnina, the tsar separated part of the boyars, servants and clerks, and in general made his entire “everyday life” special: in the Sytny, Kormovy and Khlebenny palaces a special staff of housekeepers, cooks, clerks, etc. was appointed; special detachments of archers were recruited. Special cities (about 20, including Moscow, Vologda, Vyazma, Suzdal, Kozelsk, Medyn, Veliky Ustyug) with volosts were assigned to maintain the oprichnina. In Moscow itself, some streets were given over to the oprichnina (Chertolskaya, Arbat, Sivtsev Vrazhek, part of Nikitskaya, etc.); the former residents were relocated to other streets. Up to 1,000 princes, nobles, and children of boyars, both Moscow and city, were also recruited into the oprichnina. They were given estates in the volosts assigned to maintain the oprichnina. Former landowners and patrimonial owners were evicted from those volosts to others.
The rest of the state was supposed to constitute the “zemshchina”: the tsar entrusted it to the zemstvo boyars, that is, the boyar duma itself, and put Prince Ivan Dmitrievich Belsky and Prince Ivan Fedorovich Mstislavsky at the head of its administration. All matters had to be resolved in the old way, and with big matters one should turn to the boyars, but if military or important zemstvo matters happened, then to the sovereign. For his rise, that is, for his trip to Alexandrovskaya Sloboda, the tsar exacted a fine of 100 thousand rubles from the Zemsky Prikaz.
The "oprichniki" - the sovereign's people - were supposed to "root out treason" and act exclusively in the interests of the tsarist power, supporting the authority of the supreme ruler in wartime conditions. No one limited them in the methods or methods of “eradicating” treason, and all the innovations of Ivan the Terrible turned into cruel, unjustified terror of the ruling minority against the majority of the country’s population.
In December 1569, an army of guardsmen, personally led by Ivan the Terrible, set out on a campaign against Novgorod, who allegedly wanted to betray him. The king walked as if through enemy country. The guardsmen destroyed cities (Tver, Torzhok), villages and villages, killed and robbed the population. In Novgorod itself, the defeat lasted 6 weeks. Thousands of suspects were tortured and drowned in Volkhov. The city was plundered. The property of churches, monasteries and merchants was confiscated. The beating continued in Novgorod Pyatina. Then Grozny moved towards Pskov, and only the superstition of the formidable king allowed this ancient city to avoid a pogrom.
In 1572, when a real threat was created to the very existence of the Moscow state from the Krymchaks, the oprichnina troops actually sabotaged the order of their king to oppose the enemy. The battle of Molodin with the army of Devlet-Girey was won by regiments under the leadership of the “Zemstvo” governors. After this, Ivan IV himself abolished the oprichnina, disgraced and executed many of its leaders.
Historiography of the oprichnina in the first half of the 19th century
Historians were the first to talk about the oprichnina already in the 18th and early 19th centuries: Shcherbatov, Bolotov, Karamzin. Even then, a tradition had developed to “divide” the reign of Ivan IV into two halves, which subsequently formed the basis of the theory of the “two Ivans,” introduced into historiography by N.M. Karamzin based on the study of the works of Prince A. Kurbsky. According to Kurbsky, Ivan the Terrible was a virtuous hero and a wise statesman in the first half of his reign and a crazy tyrant-despot in the second. Many historians, following Karamzin, associated the sharp change in the sovereign’s policy with his mental illness caused by the death of his first wife, Anastasia Romanovna. Even versions of “replacing” the king with another person arose and were seriously considered.
The watershed between the “good” Ivan and the “bad”, according to Karamzin, was the introduction of the oprichnina in 1565. But N.M. Karamzin was still more of a writer and moralist than a scientist. Painting the oprichnina, he created an artistically expressive picture that was supposed to impress the reader, but in no way answer the question about the causes, consequences and the very nature of this historical phenomenon.
Subsequent historians (N.I. Kostomarov) also saw the main reason for the oprichnina solely in the personal qualities of Ivan the Terrible, who did not want to listen to people who disagreed with the methods of carrying out his generally justified policy of strengthening the central government.
Solovyov and Klyuchevsky about the oprichnina
S. M. Solovyov and the “state school” of Russian historiography he created took a different path. Abstracting from the personal characteristics of the tyrant king, they saw in the activities of Ivan the Terrible, first of all, a transition from old “tribal” relations to modern “state” ones, which were completed by the oprichnina - state power in the form as the great “reformer” himself understood it. . Solovyov was the first to separate the cruelties of Tsar Ivan and the internal terror he organized from the political, social and economic processes of that time. From the point of view of historical science, this was undoubtedly a step forward.
V.O. Klyuchevsky, unlike Solovyov, considered the internal policy of Ivan the Terrible to be completely aimless, moreover, dictated exclusively by the personal qualities of the sovereign’s character. In his opinion, the oprichnina did not answer pressing political issues, and also did not eliminate the difficulties that it caused. By “difficulty,” the historian means the clashes between Ivan IV and the boyars: “The boyars imagined themselves to be powerful advisers to the sovereign of all Rus' at the very time when this sovereign, remaining faithful to the view of the appanage patrimonial landowner, in accordance with ancient Russian law, granted them as his courtyard servants the title of the sovereign's slaves. Both sides found themselves in such an unnatural relationship to each other, which they did not seem to notice while it was developing, and which they did not know what to do with when they noticed it.”
The way out of this situation was the oprichnina, which Klyuchevsky calls an attempt to “live side by side, but not together.”
According to the historian, Ivan IV had only two options:
Eliminate the boyars as a government class and replace them with other, more flexible and obedient instruments of government;
Disunite the boyars, bring to the throne the most reliable people from the boyars and rule with them, as Ivan ruled at the beginning of his reign.
It was not possible to implement any of the outputs.
Klyuchevsky points out that Ivan the Terrible should have acted against the political situation of the entire boyars, and not against individuals. The tsar does the opposite: unable to change the political system that is inconvenient for him, he persecutes and executes individuals (and not only the boyars), but at the same time leaves the boyars at the head of the zemstvo administration.
This course of action of the tsar is by no means a consequence of political calculation. It is, rather, a consequence of a distorted political understanding caused by personal emotions and fear for one’s personal position:
Klyuchevsky saw in the oprichnina not a state institution, but a manifestation of lawless anarchy aimed at shaking the foundations of the state and undermining the authority of the monarch himself. Klyuchevsky considered the oprichnina one of the most effective factors that prepared the Time of Troubles.
Concept by S.F. Platonov
The developments of the “state school” were further developed in the works of S. F. Platonov, who created the most comprehensive concept of the oprichnina, which was included in all pre-revolutionary, Soviet and some post-Soviet university textbooks.
S.F. Platonov believed that the main reasons for the oprichnina lay in Ivan the Terrible’s awareness of the danger of the appanage princely and boyar opposition. S.F. Platonov wrote: “Dissatisfied with the nobility that surrounded him, he (Ivan the Terrible) applied to her the same measure that Moscow applied to its enemies, namely, “conclusion”... What succeeded so well with the external enemy, the Terrible planned to try with the internal enemy, those. with those people who seemed hostile and dangerous to him.”
In modern language, the oprichnina of Ivan IV formed the basis for a grandiose personnel reshuffle, as a result of which large landowner boyars and appanage princes were resettled from appanage hereditary lands to places remote from the former settlement. The estates were divided into plots and complaints were made to those boyar children who were in the service of the tsar (oprichniki). According to Platonov, the oprichnina was not the “whim” of a crazy tyrant. On the contrary, Ivan the Terrible waged a focused and well-thought-out struggle against large boyar hereditary land ownership, thus wanting to eliminate separatist tendencies and suppress opposition to the central government:
Grozny sent the old owners to the outskirts, where they could be useful for the defense of the state.
Oprichnina terror, according to Platonov, was only an inevitable consequence of such a policy: the forest is cut down - the chips fly! Over time, the monarch himself becomes a hostage to the current situation. In order to stay in power and complete the measures he had planned, Ivan the Terrible was forced to pursue a policy of total terror. There was simply no other way out.
“The entire operation of reviewing and changing landowners in the eyes of the population bore the character of disaster and political terror,” the historian wrote. - With extraordinary cruelty, he (Ivan the Terrible), without any investigation or trial, executed and tortured people he disliked, exiled their families, ruined their farms. His guardsmen did not hesitate to kill defenseless people, rob and rape them “for a laugh.”
One of the main negative consequences of the oprichnina Platonov recognizes is the disruption of the economic life of the country - the state of stability of the population achieved by the state was lost. In addition, the population’s hatred of the cruel authorities brought discord into society itself, giving rise to general uprisings and peasant wars after the death of Ivan the Terrible - the harbingers of the Troubles of the early 17th century.
In his general assessment of the oprichnina, S.F. Platonov puts much more “pluses” than all his predecessors. According to his concept, Ivan the Terrible was able to achieve indisputable results in the policy of centralization of the Russian state: large landowners (the boyar elite) were ruined and partly destroyed, a large mass of relatively small landowners and service people (nobles) gained dominance, which, of course, contributed to increasing the country's defense capability . Hence the progressive nature of the oprichnina policy.
It was this concept that was established in Russian historiography for many years.
“Apologetic” historiography of the oprichnina (1920-1956)
Despite the abundance of contradictory facts that came to light already in the 1910-20s, S.F. Platonov’s “apologetic” concept regarding the oprichnina and Ivan IV the Terrible was not at all disgraced. On the contrary, it gave birth to a number of successors and sincere supporters.
In 1922, the book “Ivan the Terrible” by former Moscow University professor R. Vipper was published. Having witnessed the collapse of the Russian Empire, having tasted the full extent of Soviet anarchy and tyranny, political emigrant and quite serious historian R. Vipper created not a historical study, but a very passionate panegyric to the oprichnina and Ivan the Terrible himself - a politician who managed to “restore order with a firm hand.” The author for the first time examines the internal politics of Grozny (oprichnina) in direct connection with the foreign policy situation. However, Vipper's interpretation of many foreign policy events is largely fantastic and far-fetched. Ivan the Terrible appears in his work as a wise and far-sighted ruler who cared, first of all, about the interests of his great power. The executions and terror of Grozny are justified and can be explained by completely objective reasons: the oprichnina was necessary due to the extremely difficult military situation in the country, the ruin of Novgorod - for the sake of improving the situation at the front, etc.
The oprichnina itself, according to Vipper, is an expression of democratic (!) tendencies of the 16th century. Thus, the Zemsky Sobor of 1566 is artificially connected by the author with the creation of the oprichnina in 1565, the transformation of the oprichnina into a courtyard (1572) is interpreted by Vipper as an expansion of the system caused by the betrayal of the Novgorodians and the ruinous raid of the Crimean Tatars. He refuses to admit that the reform of 1572 was in fact the destruction of the oprichnina. The reasons for the catastrophic consequences for Rus' of the end of the Livonian War are equally unobvious to Vipper.
The chief official historiographer of the revolution, M.N., went even further in his apologetics for Grozny and the oprichnina. Pokrovsky. In his “Russian History from Ancient Times,” the convinced revolutionary turns Ivan the Terrible into the leader of a democratic revolution, a more successful forerunner of Emperor Paul I, who is also portrayed by Pokrovsky as a “democrat on the throne.” Justification of tyrants is one of Pokrovsky's favorite themes. He saw the aristocracy as such as the main object of his hatred, because its power is, by definition, harmful.
However, to faithful Marxist historians, Pokrovsky’s views undoubtedly seemed overly infected with an idealistic spirit. No individual can play any significant role in history - after all, history is governed by the class struggle. This is what Marxism teaches. And Pokrovsky, having listened enough to the seminaries of Vinogradov, Klyuchevsky and other “bourgeois specialists,” was never able to get rid of the burp of idealism in himself, attaching too much importance to individuals, as if they did not obey the laws of historical materialism common to all...
The most typical of the orthodox Marxist approach to the problem of Ivan the Terrible and the oprichnina is M. Nechkina’s article about Ivan IV in the First Soviet Encyclopedia (1933). In her interpretation, the personality of the king does not matter at all:
The social meaning of the oprichnina was the elimination of the boyars as a class and its dissolution into the mass of small land feudal lords. Ivan worked to realize this goal with “the greatest consistency and indestructible perseverance” and was completely successful in his work.
This was the only correct and only possible interpretation of the policies of Ivan the Terrible.
Moreover, this interpretation was so liked by the “collectors” and “revivers” of the new Russian Empire, namely the USSR, that it was immediately adopted by the Stalinist leadership. The new great-power ideology needed historical roots, especially on the eve of the upcoming war. Stories about Russian military leaders and generals of the past who fought with the Germans or with anyone remotely similar to the Germans were urgently created and replicated. The victories of Alexander Nevsky, Peter I (true, he fought with the Swedes, but why go into details?..), Alexander Suvorov were recalled and extolled. Dmitry Donskoy, Minin with Pozharsky and Mikhail Kutuzov, who fought against foreign aggressors, also after 20 years of oblivion, were declared national heroes and glorious sons of the Fatherland.
Of course, under all these circumstances, Ivan the Terrible could not remain forgotten. True, he did not repel foreign aggression and did not win a military victory over the Germans, but he was the creator of a centralized Russian state, a fighter against disorder and anarchy created by malicious aristocrats - the boyars. He began to introduce revolutionary reforms with the aim of creating a new order. But even an autocratic king can play a positive role if the monarchy is a progressive system at this point in history...
Despite the very sad fate of Academician Platonov himself, who was convicted in an “academic case” (1929-1930), the “apologization” of the oprichnina that he began gained more and more momentum in the late 1930s.
Whether by chance or not, in 1937 – the very “peak” of Stalin’s repressions – Plato’s “Essays on the History of the Time of Troubles in the Moscow State of the 16th–17th centuries” were republished for the fourth time, and the Higher School of Propagandists under the Central Committee of the Party published (though “for internal use”) fragments of Platonov’s pre-revolutionary textbook for universities.
In 1941, director S. Eisenstein received an “order” from the Kremlin to shoot a film about Ivan the Terrible. Naturally, Comrade Stalin wanted to see a Terrible Tsar who would fully fit into the concept of the Soviet “apologists.” Therefore, all the events included in Eisenstein’s script are subordinated to the main conflict - the struggle for autocracy against the rebellious boyars and against everyone who interferes with him in unifying the lands and strengthening the state. The film Ivan the Terrible (1944) exalts Tsar Ivan as a wise and fair ruler who had a great goal. Oprichnina and terror are presented as inevitable “costs” in achieving it. But even these “costs” (the second episode of the film) Comrade Stalin chose not to allow on screens.
In 1946, a Resolution of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks was issued, which spoke of the “progressive army of the guardsmen.” The progressive significance in the then historiography of the Oprichnina Army was that its formation was a necessary stage in the struggle to strengthen the centralized state and represented a struggle of the central government, based on the serving nobility, against the feudal aristocracy and appanage remnants.
Thus, a positive assessment of the activities of Ivan IV in Soviet historiography was supported at the highest state level. Until 1956, the most cruel tyrant in the history of Russia appeared on the pages of textbooks, works of art and in cinema as a national hero, a true patriot, and a wise politician.
Revision of the concept of oprichnina during the years of Khrushchev’s “thaw”
As soon as Khrushchev read his famous report at the 20th Congress, all panegyric odes to Grozny came to an end. The “plus” sign abruptly changed to a “minus”, and historians no longer hesitated to draw completely obvious parallels between the reign of Ivan the Terrible and the reign of the only recently deceased Soviet tyrant.
A number of articles by domestic researchers immediately appear in which the “cult of personality” of Stalin and the “cult of personality” of Grozny are debunked in approximately the same terms and using real examples similar to each other.
One of the first articles published by V.N. Shevyakova “On the issue of the oprichnina of Ivan the Terrible”, explaining the causes and consequences of the oprichnina in the spirit of N.I. Kostomarov and V.O. Klyuchevsky – i.e. extremely negative:
The tsar himself, contrary to all previous apologetics, was called what he really was - the executioner of his subjects exposed to power.
Following Shevyakov’s article comes an even more radical article by S.N. Dubrovsky, “On the cult of personality in some works on historical issues (on the assessment of Ivan IV, etc.).” The author views the oprichnina not as a war of the king against the appanage aristocracy. On the contrary, he believes that Ivan the Terrible was at one with the landowner boyars. With their help, the king waged a war against his people with the sole purpose of clearing the ground for the subsequent enslavement of the peasants. According to Dubrovsky, Ivan IV was not at all as talented and smart as historians of the Stalin era tried to present him. The author accuses them of deliberately juggling and distorting historical facts indicating the personal qualities of the king.
In 1964, A.A. Zimin’s book “The Oprichnina of Ivan the Terrible” was published. Zimin processed a huge number of sources, raised a lot of factual material related to the oprichnina. But his own opinion was literally drowned in the abundance of names, graphs, numbers and solid facts. The unambiguous conclusions so characteristic of his predecessors are practically absent in the historian’s work. With many reservations, Zimin agrees that most of the bloodshed and crimes of the guardsmen were useless. However, “objectively” the content of the oprichnina in his eyes still looks progressive: Grozny’s initial thought was correct, and then everything was ruined by the oprichnina themselves, who degenerated into bandits and robbers.
Zimin's book was written during the reign of Khrushchev, and therefore the author tries to satisfy both sides of the argument. However, at the end of his life A. A. Zimin revised his views towards a purely negative assessment of the oprichnina, seeing "the bloody glow of the oprichnina" an extreme manifestation of serfdom and despotic tendencies as opposed to pre-bourgeois ones.
These positions were developed by his student V.B. Kobrin and the latter’s student A.L. Yurganov. Based on specific research that began before the war and carried out by S. B. Veselovsky and A. A. Zimin (and continued by V. B. Kobrin), they showed that S. F. Platonov’s theory about the defeat as a result of the oprichnina of patrimonial land ownership - nothing more than a historical myth.
Criticism of Platonov's concept
Back in the 1910-1920s, research began on a colossal complex of materials, formally, it would seem, far from the problems of the oprichnina. Historians have studied a huge number of scribe books where land plots of both large landowners and service people were recorded. These were, in the full sense of the word, accounting records of that time.
And the more materials related to land ownership were introduced into scientific circulation in the 1930s-60s, the more interesting the picture became. It turned out that large landholdings did not suffer in any way as a result of the oprichnina. In fact, at the end of the 16th century it remained almost the same as it was before the oprichnina. It also turned out that those lands that went specifically to the oprichnina often included territories inhabited by service people who did not have large plots. For example, the territory of the Suzdal principality was almost entirely populated by service people; there were very few rich landowners there. Moreover, according to scribe books, it often turned out that many guardsmen who allegedly received their estates in the Moscow region for serving the tsar were their owners before. It’s just that in 1565-72, small landowners automatically fell into the ranks of the guardsmen, because The sovereign declared these lands oprichnina.
All these data were completely at odds with what was expressed by S. F. Platonov, who did not process scribal books, did not know statistics and practically did not use sources of a mass nature.
Soon another source was discovered, which Platonov also did not analyze in detail - the famous synodics. They contain lists of people killed and tortured by order of Tsar Ivan. Basically, they died or were executed and tortured without repentance and communion, therefore, the king was sinful in that they did not die in a Christian way. These synodics were sent to monasteries for commemoration.
S. B. Veselovsky analyzed the synodics in detail and came to an unequivocal conclusion: it is impossible to say that during the period of oprichnina terror it was mainly large landowners who died. Yes, undoubtedly, the boyars and members of their families were executed, but besides them, an incredible number of service people died. Persons of the clergy of absolutely all ranks died, people who were in the sovereign's service in the orders, military leaders, minor officials, and simple warriors. Finally, an incredible number of ordinary people died - urban, townspeople, those who inhabited villages and hamlets on the territory of certain estates and estates. According to S. B. Veselovsky’s calculations, for one boyar or person from the Sovereign’s court there were three or four ordinary landowners, and for one service person there were a dozen commoners. Consequently, the assertion that the terror was selective in nature and was directed only against the boyar elite is fundamentally incorrect.
In the 1940s, S.B. Veselovsky wrote his book “Essays on the History of the Oprichnina” “on the table”, because it was completely impossible to publish it under a modern tyrant. The historian died in 1952, but his conclusions and developments on the problem of oprichnina were not forgotten and were actively used in criticism of the concept of S.F. Platonov and his followers.
Another serious mistake of S.F. Platonov was that he believed that the boyars had colossal estates, which included parts of the former principalities. Thus, the danger of separatism remained – i.e. restoration of one or another reign. As confirmation, Platonov cites the fact that during the illness of Ivan IV in 1553, the appanage prince Vladimir Staritsky, a large landowner and close relative of the tsar, was a possible contender for the throne.
An appeal to the materials of the scribe books showed that the boyars had their own lands in different, as they would say now, regions, and then appanages. The boyars had to serve in different places, and therefore, on occasion, they bought land (or it was given to them) where they served. The same person often owned land in Nizhny Novgorod, Suzdal, and Moscow, i.e. was not tied specifically to any particular place. There was no talk of somehow separating, of avoiding the process of centralization, because even the largest landowners could not gather their lands together and oppose their power to the power of the great sovereign. The process of centralization of the state was completely objective, and there is no reason to say that the boyar aristocracy actively prevented it.
Thanks to the study of sources, it turned out that the very postulate about the resistance of the boyars and the descendants of appanage princes to centralization is a purely speculative construction, derived from theoretical analogies between the social system of Russia and Western Europe in the era of feudalism and absolutism. The sources do not provide any direct basis for such statements. The postulation of large-scale “boyar conspiracies” in the era of Ivan the Terrible is based on statements emanating only from Ivan the Terrible himself.
The only lands that could lay claim to a “departure” from a single state in the 16th century were Novgorod and Pskov. In the event of separation from Moscow in the conditions of the Livonian War, they would not have been able to maintain independence, and would inevitably have been captured by opponents of the Moscow sovereign. Therefore, Zimin and Kobrin consider Ivan IV’s campaign against Novgorod historically justified and condemn only the tsar’s methods of struggle with potential separatists.
The new concept of understanding such a phenomenon as the oprichnina, created by Zimin, Kobrin and their followers, is built on the proof that the oprichnina objectively resolved (albeit by barbaric methods) some pressing problems, namely: strengthening centralization, destroying the remnants of the appanage system and the independence of the church. But the oprichnina was, first of all, a tool for establishing the personal despotic power of Ivan the Terrible. The terror he unleashed was of a national nature, was caused solely by the tsar’s fear for his position (“beat your own so that strangers will be afraid”) and did not have any “high” political goal or social background.
The point of view of the Soviet historian D. Al (Alshits), already in the 2000s, expressed the opinion that the terror of Ivan the Terrible was aimed at the total subjugation of everyone and everything to the unified power of the autocratic monarch. Everyone who did not personally prove their loyalty to the sovereign was destroyed; the independence of the church was destroyed; The economically independent trading Novgorod was destroyed, the merchant class was subjugated, etc. Thus, Ivan the Terrible did not want to say, like Louis XIV, but to prove to all his contemporaries through effective measures that “I am the state.” The oprichnina acted as a state institution for the protection of the monarch, his personal guard.
This concept suited the scientific community for some time. However, trends towards a new rehabilitation of Ivan the Terrible and even towards the creation of his new cult were fully developed in subsequent historiography. For example, in an article in the Great Soviet Encyclopedia (1972), while there is a certain duality in the assessment, the positive qualities of Ivan the Terrible are clearly exaggerated, and the negative ones are downplayed.
With the beginning of “perestroika” and a new anti-Stalinist campaign in the media, Grozny and the oprichnina were again condemned and compared with the period of Stalinist repressions. During this period, the reassessment of historical events, including the cause, resulted mainly not in scientific research, but in populist reasoning on the pages of central newspapers and magazines.
Employees of the NKVD and other law enforcement agencies (the so-called “special officers”) in newspaper publications were no longer referred to as “oprichniki”; the terror of the 16th century was directly associated with the “Yezhovshchina” of the 1930s, as if all this had happened just yesterday. “History repeats itself” - this strange, unconfirmed truth was repeated by politicians, parliamentarians, writers, and even highly respected scientists who were inclined again and again to draw historical parallels between Grozny and Stalin, Malyuta Skuratov and Beria, etc. and so on.
The attitude towards the oprichnina and the personality of Ivan the Terrible himself today can be called a “litmus test” of the political situation in our country. During periods of liberalization of public and state life in Russia, which, as a rule, are followed by a separatist “parade of sovereignties,” anarchy, and a change in the value system, Ivan the Terrible is perceived as a bloody tyrant and tyrant. Tired of anarchy and permissiveness, society is again ready to dream of a “strong hand,” the revival of statehood, and even stable tyranny in the spirit of Ivan the Terrible, Stalin, or anyone else...
Today, not only in society, but also in scientific circles, the tendency to “apologize” Stalin as a great statesman is again clearly visible. From television screens and the pages of the press they are again persistently trying to prove to us that Joseph Dzhugashvili created a great power that won the war, built rockets, blocked the Yenisei and was even ahead of the rest in the field of ballet. And in the 1930s-50s they imprisoned and shot only those who needed to be imprisoned and shot - former tsarist officials and officers, spies and dissidents of all stripes. Let us remember that Academician S.F. Platonov held approximately the same opinion regarding the oprichnina of Ivan the Terrible and the “selectivity” of his terror. However, already in 1929, the academician himself became one of the victims of the oprichnina contemporary to him - the OGPU, died in exile, and his name was erased from the history of Russian historical science for a long time.
Based on materials:
Veselovsky S.B. Tsar Ivan the Terrible in the works of writers and historians. Three articles. – M., 1999
Platonov S.F. Ivan groznyj. – Petersburg: Brockhaus and Efron, 1923
saw in the betrayals and rebellions of the feudal nobility. Ivan the Terrible was confident in the need for strong autocratic power, the main obstacle to which was the boyar-princely opposition. Under these conditions, he goes to establish a regime of terror.
The decision of Ivan the Terrible was preceded by a number of events on the internal political scene of the state:
- Death of Ivan IV's wife Anastasia, who was allegedly poisoned;
- Failures in foreign policy, failures in the Livonian War, successful raids of the Crimean Tatars on Russian lands;
- The flight of the prince to Lithuania.
These events served as the reason for the tightening of the internal policies of Ivan IV and the introduction of the oprichnina. In January 1565, Ivan IV left Moscow for Aleksandrovskaya Sloboda. From the settlement he sends two messages. One was sent to the metropolitan and the boyar duma, the second to the townspeople. The tsar said that he was renouncing royal power because of boyar betrayals, but had no complaints against the common people.
Muscovites went with an embassy to Ivan the Terrible several times. The Tsar eventually agreed to return to Moscow, but on the condition that he would be provided with:
- full right of extrajudicial reprisal against traitors;
- the king will be given a personal inheritance;
- A special army of thousands of selected nobles and boyars will be recruited for the king.
The oprichnina was established in 1565. The oprichnina of Ivan IV is a system of measures aimed at strengthening the autocracy and further enslaving the peasantry. The territory of the country was divided into oprichnina lands, the income from which went to the sovereign treasury. The oprichnina included the most fertile lands of the state, cities with large suburbs and Pomeranian cities. In these areas, princely and boyar estates were confiscated, their former owners were evicted to the surrounding areas, where they received land on the basis of local law.
The new owners of the oprichnina lands were the nobles who were part of the oprichnina army. These innovations led to the redistribution of land, to the weakening of large feudal-patrimonial land ownership and the elimination of its independence from the central government. Ivan the Terrible carried out all his transformations with particular cruelty. Metropolitan Philip was killed, and the last appanage prince, Vladimir Staritsky, was poisoned. Entire cities were destroyed.
The consequences of the oprichnina were as follows. Its main goal was to destroy the remnants of feudal fragmentation and was successfully accomplished. But having eliminated fragmentation, the oprichnina bled the people dry, demoralized the people, and led to an aggravation of internal political contradictions. The ruin and terror of the oprichnina years (1565 - 1572) became one of the main reasons for the deep crisis experienced by Russia at the end of the 16th century.
- Increasing social instability in the conditions of the dynastic crisis led the Russian state to tragic events: the emergence of impostors,
- invasion of foreign troops,
- economic decline
- impoverishment of the people
- degradation of the state.
They played a significant role in the history of the formation of the Russian state. The king was placed on the throne in 1547. But in the first years of his reign, the main political course of the state was not the oprichnina of Ivan the Terrible.
Briefly about the reforms of the Elected Rada
The elected Rada became the de facto government, assembled from noble boyars, nobles, some government officials and representatives of the clergy. This government operated from 1547 to 1560. Essentially, all of his reforms were aimed at state centralization and absolutization of power, the creation of uniform state bodies and orders throughout the country. In fact, time itself required such trends. The absolutization of monarchical government occurred in exactly the same way in
Briefly about the reasons
However, the activities and the very existence of the Elected Rada, for a number of reasons, over time begins to contradict the aspirations of Ivan the Terrible. In 1560, a break occurred between the tsar and his associates, which resulted in the oprichnina of Ivan the Terrible. Briefly speaking about the reasons for the breakdown of this union, it should be noted that the progressive nature of the reforms of the Elected Rada eventually became tired of the tsar. It began to seem to the latter that the boyars were deliberately delaying the centralization of the state; moreover, in 1560 he accused two members of the Elected Rada
Sylvester and Adashev - that they want to concentrate the real levers of power in their own hands. An important reason for the gap is the conflict between the figures of the informal government and the royal wife Anastasia Yuryeva. After her imminent death, the tsar repeatedly accused the boyars of having “destroyed her from the world.” The last spark that finally inflamed Ivan IV’s hostility towards the boyar elite was the transition of one of the members of the former Elected Rada, Andrei Kurbsky, to the side of the Poles during the reason that prompted the latter to do this was dissatisfaction with the fact that the tsar was trampling on the eternal liberties and rights of the boyars. In response to this, the tsar forms an obedient corps of oprichniki, which begins large-scale terror against the aristocracy in the country.
Oprichnina of Ivan the Terrible: briefly about the conduct
Since 1565, a brutal struggle began in the Muscovite kingdom to eliminate, or rather, physically destroy, the boyar stratum. The country was divided into two parts: one of the parts became the personal inheritance of the king and was called the oprichnina. The other was governed and called the Zemshchina. The territory of the oprichnina continuously increased and covered most of the land in the country. The political essence of the oprichnina of Ivan the Terrible was that the tsar obtained for himself the right and consent of the boyars to the fact that he could arbitrarily disgrace and execute all those whom he himself considered traitors. Needless to say, after Kurbsky’s flight, the tsar saw traitors and conspirators everywhere among the boyar elite? Over the following years, hundreds of aristocratic families were evicted from their lands, which were given to the guardsmen. The terror reached its apogee in 1570, when the last appanage prince in Rus', Vladimir Staritsky, was killed. Punitive campaigns were carried out against Novgorod, Klin, Torzhok, and Tver. Hundreds of villages were burned, mass executions were carried out in Moscow.
Results of the oprichnina
The result of this policy was the weakening of the political role of the boyars in the country. As a result, the king achieved autocracy. On the one hand, despotism and the very fact of mass destruction and murder are negative trends. However, autocracy made it possible to create a strong army and effective for its time, which resulted in the progressive expansion of state territories.
Oprichnina- a system of emergency measures applied by the Russian Tsar Ivan IV the Terrible in 1565-1572. in domestic politics to defeat the boyar-princely opposition and strengthen the Russian centralized state. Also, “oprichnina” was a name for a special administrative-territorial formation within the Russian state - the personal possession of Ivan IV and his family in 1565-1572. The oprichnina was consistently separated territorially from the rest of the country - the zemshchina.
Reasons and goals of the oprichnina
The introduction of the oprichnina by Ivan the Terrible was caused by the complexities of the internal situation in the country, including the contradiction between the political consciousness of the boyars, certain circles of the highest bureaucracy (secretaries), the highest clergy who wanted independence, on the one hand, and, on the other, Ivan the Terrible’s desire for unlimited power . Thus, the main obstacle for the tsar here became the boyar-princely opposition and boyar privileges. But he decided to deal with the remnants of fragmentation using purely traditional methods, because The oprichnina in form was a return to the times of fragmentation.
Establishment of the oprichnina. Oprichnina army
The internal political crisis was aggravated by Ivan the Terrible’s resignation of the Elected Rada (1560), the death of Metropolitan Macarius (1563), who kept the tsar within the bounds of prudence, and the betrayal and flight abroad of Prince A.M. Kurbsky (April 1564). Deciding to break the brewing opposition, on December 3, 1564, Ivan the Terrible, taking with him the state treasury, personal library, revered icons and symbols of power, together with his wife Maria Temryukovna and children, suddenly left Moscow, going on a pilgrimage to the village. Kolomenskoye. The Tsar settled 65 km from Moscow in Aleksandrovskaya Sloboda. From there, in January 1565, he addressed the capital with two messages. In the first message sent to the clergy and the Boyar Duma, Ivan IV announced his renunciation of power due to the betrayal of the boyars and asked to be allocated a special inheritance - the oprichnina. In the second message, addressed to the townspeople, he reported on the decision made and added that he had no complaints about the townspeople.
It was a well-calculated political maneuver. Using the people's faith in the tsar, Ivan the Terrible expected that he would be called to return to the throne. When this happened, the tsar dictated his conditions: the right to unlimited autocratic power and the establishment of the oprichnina. The country was divided into two parts: the oprichnina and the zemshchina. Ivan IV included the most important lands in the oprichnina. It included Pomeranian cities, cities with large settlements and strategically important ones, as well as the most economically developed areas of the country. In the oprichnina, in parallel with the zemshchina, a system of state government bodies developed: its own duma, orders (“cells”), the tsar’s personal guard (up to 1 thousand oprichniki at the beginning and up to 6 thousand by the end of the oprichnina). Here traditional law was replaced by the “word” (arbitrariness) of the monarch. On the lands of the boyars evicted to the territory of the zemshchina, nobles who were part of the oprichnina army settled. The population of the zemshchina had to support this army.
However, the tsar did not limit his power to the territory of the oprichnina. During negotiations with a deputation from the zemshchina, he negotiated for himself the right to uncontrollably dispose of the lives and property of all subjects of the Moscow state.
The composition of the oprichnina army was heterogeneous: among the oprichniki there were princes (Odoevsky, Khovansky, Trubetskoy, etc.), and boyars, foreign mercenaries, and simply service people. By joining the oprichnina, they renounced their family and generally accepted norms of behavior, took an oath of allegiance to the tsar, including not communicating with “zemsky” people. The guardsmen wore black clothes. Dog heads and brooms were attached to their saddles, symbolizing the dog's devotion to the king and readiness to sweep treason out of the country. Bound by strict discipline, the oprichniki operated in the zemshchina as if in enemy territory, zealously carrying out the orders of Ivan the Terrible to eradicate “sedition”, limitlessly abusing the power given to them. Cruelty and atrocities in reprisals against people became the norm for the guardsmen. Provincial nobleman Malyuta Skuratov, boyar A.D. Basmanov, and Prince A.I. Vyazemsky stood out for their special zeal and implementation of royal decrees.
Progress and results of the oprichnina
In an effort to destroy the separatism of the nobility, Ivan IV did not stop at any cruelty. Oprichnina terror, executions, exiles began. In Tver, Moscow Metropolitan Philip was killed, and in Moscow, Prince Vladimir Staritsky, the Tsar’s cousin who claimed the throne, was poisoned when he was summoned there. The center and north-west of the Russian lands, where the boyars were especially strong, were subjected to the most severe defeat. In 1570, Ivan IV launched a campaign against Novgorod. who allegedly wanted to go to Lithuania. On the way, Klin, Torzhok, and Tver were destroyed. The economic independence of large cities was undermined.
Oprichnina did not completely destroy boyar-princely land ownership, but weakened its power. The political role of the boyar aristocracy was undermined. opposed to centralization. At the same time, the oprichnina worsened the situation of the peasantry and largely contributed to its enslavement. Thus, during the years of the oprichnina, “black” and palace lands were generously distributed to landowners, and peasant duties increased sharply. The guardsmen took the peasants out of the zemshchina “by force and without delay.” This affected almost all lands and led to the ruin of land farms. The area of arable land was rapidly declining. Peasants fled to the Urals and the Volga region. In response, “reserved summers” were introduced in 1581, when “temporarily” peasants were forbidden to leave the landowners at all, even on St. George’s Day. The destruction of the richest territories of the country during the years of the oprichnina and the Livonian War were the cause of the socio-political and foreign policy crisis in which Russia found itself at the turn of the 16th-17th centuries.
Having defeated the boyar-princely opposition, Ivan the Terrible encountered new manifestations of separatism, but not only from the boyars, but also among the top guardsmen.
Oprichnina could only give a temporary effect, because it was an attempt by brute force to break what was based on the economic laws of development inherent in feudalism. The oprichnina led to an even greater aggravation of contradictions within the country.
The raid of the Crimean Tatars on Moscow in 1571, who burned the Moscow settlement, showed the inability of the oprichnina army to successfully fight external enemies. All this forced the tsar to abolish the oprichnina, which in 1572 was transformed into the “Sovereign Court”.
The need to combat specific antiquity, the need for centralization and strengthening of statehood were objectively necessary for Russia. The discussion was about ways of centralization and methods for its implementation. A number of historians believe that an alternative to the oprichnina could be structural transformations similar to the reforms of the Chosen Rada. This would allow, according to representatives of this point of view, to have an estate-representative monarchy instead of the unlimited autocracy of Ivan IV.
